TOPIC: ESPN covering E-Sports

There has been a hot debate of whether ESPN's choice of covering professional gamers is the right thing to do. I recently saw a segment where they had professional gamers talk about the League of Legends finals that just took place. There are also multiple articles and coverage about LoL scene and other games in general by ESPN. The effort is there but whenever I see them post their article or post anything game related in social media. You quickly see two groups of people trash talking each other.

One group is people who believe that competing in a video game is not a sport. When people think of sport we think of a game that requires physical activity like basketball and football. People have a hard time understanding how this can be put in the same category as sitting in front of your computer. A lot have argued that there are a lot of sports that does not require physical activity and has been covered by ESPN in the past. This group see ESPN's attempt as a foolish one.

Another group are people who don't see the issue with ESPN covering video games. They believe that although you don't require as much physical activity as you do in regular sports, it takes a lot of mental strength to compete at the highest level. There is clearly a reason as to why NBA stars like Rick Fox and Shaquille O'neal are investing in e-sports. The money and interest is there so it makes sense as to why ESPN wants to be relevant in this market.

I personally think ESPN is just doing it for more attention and money. I don't see anything wrong with it. People are misunderstanding the fact that esports need ESPN coverage or something when they don't. People who normally like esports don't really go for ESPN for news anyway. It's more like getting free demographic of people that aren't normally interested in sports to be invested in your brand which is a smart decision imo.